Client-assisted time-shift live media and advertisement content play for learned abr video white spot coverage in a streaming network

ABSTRACT

A scheme for managing ABR live media streaming of content in a wireless radio network environment that may have outage areas. A wireless UE device is configured to determine its current location, speed and travel direction associated therewith and transmit the information to a network node, and receive estimated video outage area information from the network node in response. A request may be provided to the network node for facilitating preloading of advertisement content prior to entering an outage area. Upon entering an outage area, the current ABR live media streaming session is time-shifted for a duration based on how long the outage may last and playback of advertisements pre-populated at the wireless UE device may be commenced. When the wireless UE device exits the outage area, the ABR streaming session may be resumed to play the time-shifted media content from an appropriate segment.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present disclosure generally relates to communication networks. Moreparticularly, and not by way of any limitation, the present disclosureis directed to a scheme for managing coverage in a wireless networkenvironment configured to facilitate adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming oflive media content.

BACKGROUND

While mobile radio data network coverage is widespread, there may beareas where data coverage is low or where there is an above averageamount of channel noise due to various factors such as, e.g.,structures, interference, weather, etc. Although phone calls cangenerally overcome these issues by switching to a different networkprotocol, video delivered over data networks generally cannot.Accordingly, when consuming video via ABR streaming while travelingthough an area of low coverage or poor signal quality, it is becomesnecessary to manage a user's experience in a satisfactory manner,especially in a broadcast live media streaming environment.

SUMMARY

The present patent disclosure is broadly directed to systems, methods,apparatuses, devices, and associated non-transitory computer-readablemedia for managing ABR streaming sessions in a wireless networkenvironment that may have potential video outage areas (also referred toherein as “white spots”). In one embodiment, a radio white spot coveragemethod for a wireless user equipment (UE) device engaged in an ABR livemedia streaming session is disclosed. The claimed embodiment comprises,inter alia, determining that the wireless UE device is in a radio whitespot area (i.e., an area having poor video QoS) and providing an updatedmanifest file to the wireless UE device including a reference to aservice outrage notification message and one or more references toadvertisement segments locally cached at the wireless UE device thathave been downloaded prior to entering the white spot area (i.e., videooutage area). A persistent connectivity state for the live mediastreaming session is maintained, e.g., based on a unique streamingsession identifier. Live media stream of the ABR streaming session istime-shifted for a duration responsive to an estimation of how longservice outage is to last depending on an estimated travel direction andestimated speed associated with the wireless UE device.

In another aspect, an embodiment of a network node, system or apparatuscomprising, e.g., an ABR stream delivery server, is disclosed forfacilitating ABR live media streaming sessions in a wireless radionetwork environment. One or more processors are operatively coupled toan outage area request module configured to request anticipated videooutage areas with respect to a wireless UE device, the anticipated videooutage areas being based on the wireless UE device's current locationand estimated direction of travel in the wireless radio networkenvironment. An advertisement request module operating under control ofthe one or more processors is provided for obtaining advertisementcontent from an advertisement server, wherein the advertisement contentmay be location-specific and/or based on subscriber demographics, e.g.,relevant with respect to the anticipated video outage areas of thewireless UE device. A persistent memory is provided for storing programinstructions, which perform the following operations when executed bythe one or more processors: determine that a wireless UE device engagedin an ABR live media streaming session has entered a video outage area;provide an updated manifest file to the wireless UE device, the updatedmanifest file including a reference to a service outage notificationmessage and one or more references to advertisement content locallycached at the wireless UE device that is downloaded prior to thewireless UE device entering the video outage area; maintain a persistentconnectivity state for the ABR live media streaming session andeffectuate time-shifting of the ABR live media stream for a durationresponsive to an estimation of how long service outage is to lastdepending on an estimated travel direction and an estimated speedassociated with the wireless UE device; and when the wireless UE deviceexits the video outage area, provide one or more updated manifests tothe wireless UE device including references to the time-shifted ABR livemedia stream.

In one variation, the persistent memory of a network node may furtherinclude instructions for performing the following: enable creditallocation for advertisements in the time-shifted ABR live media stream;responsive to enabling credit allocation for the advertisements in thetime-shifted ABR live media stream, omit updating of manifests for theadvertisements in the time-shifted ABR live media stream; and storeupdated manifests only for media segments of the time-shifted ABR livemedia stream.

In a still further variation, the persistent memory of a network nodemay further comprise instructions of performing the following: determineif the wireless UE device stopped playing the advertisement contentlocally cached at the wireless UE device while in the video outage area;and if so, terminate the persistent connectivity state for the ABR livemedia streaming session and provide a manifest associated withnon-time-shifted ABR live media to the wireless UE device when thewireless UE device exits the video outage area.

In a further aspect, a method operating at a wireless UE device engagedin an ABR live media streaming session is disclosed. In one embodiment,the method comprises, inter alia, transmitting, by the wireless UEdevice, current location information, speed and travel directionassociated with the wireless UE device to a network node; and responsivethereto, receiving estimated video outage area information from thenetwork node. A request is transmitted to the network node forfacilitating preloading of advertisement content prior to entering anoutage area, the request preferably including an estimated duration ofservice outage, among others. Responsive thereto, suitable advertisementcontent is received from the network node to be played for the estimatedduration. One example implementation may involve obtaining an estimationof how long service outage is to last in the outage area based on anestimated travel direction and an estimated speed associated with thewireless UE device. In another variation, a notification may betransmitted to the network node to time-shift the live media stream ofthe ABR streaming session at a specific point in the media stream,preferably for the duration of the outage.

In a related aspect, a wireless UE device operative in a live ABRstreaming environment is disclosed. In one embodiment, the wireless UEdevice comprises a cache for storing advertisement content downloadedfrom a network node while the wireless UE device is in radio coveragehaving a sufficient signal quality for supporting an overall bandwidthrate that is greater than a bandwidth rate necessary for facilitating anABR live media streaming session of content encoded at a highestbitrate. An ABR buffer is provided for storing media segments determinedto be downloaded at bitrate(s) based on a calculated bandwidth availableto an ABR client application as well as any ads moved from the cache. AnABR client player is configured to play back content out of the ABRbuffer. One or more processors are coupled to a persistent memory havingprogram instructions for controlling the ABR client player andconfigured to perform the following: transmit current locationinformation, speed and travel direction associated with the wireless UEdevice to a network node; receive estimated video outage areainformation from the network node, the estimated video outage areainformation being determined responsive to the current locationinformation, speed and travel direction provided by the wireless UEdevice; send a request to the network node for facilitating preloadingof advertisement content prior to entering an outage area; and receivethe advertisement content from the network node for storage in thecache, the advertisement content to be played for a duration responsiveto an estimation of how long service outage is to last in the outagearea based on an estimated travel direction and an estimated speedassociated with the wireless UE device.

In one variation, the persistent memory of the wireless UE device mayfurther include instructions for performing: upon entering the outagearea, provide an alert or user notification that the ABR live mediastreaming session will be time-shifted for the duration of serviceoutage; move the cached advertisement content into the ABR buffer;commence playout of the advertisement content by the ABR client playerwithout having to receive updated manifests from the network node forthe advertisement content; and provide a message to the network node totime-shift the live media stream of the ABR streaming session at aspecific point in the media stream, preferably for the duration of theoutage. The persistent memory may further include instructions forperforming: upon exiting the outage area, receive manifests from thenetwork node with respect to the time-shifted ABR live media stream andresume the time-shifted ABR live media streaming session by the ABRclient player based on the received manifests. In a further variation,the persistent memory of the wireless UE device may include instructionsfor determining that there was credit allocation for the advertisementcontent; and responsive to the determining, deleting advertisementsegments of the resumed time-shifted ABR live media streaming session.

In still further aspects, one or more embodiments of a non-transitorycomputer-readable medium containing computer-executable programinstructions or code portions stored thereon are disclosed forperforming one or more embodiments of the methods of the presentinvention when executed by a processor entity of a network node,element, virtual appliance, UE device, and the like, mutatis mutandis.Further features of the various embodiments are as claimed in thedependent claims.

Advantages of the present invention include, but not limited to, theability to adapt to ad hoc issues such as, e.g., inclement weatherinterference, variable low radio quality, noise, etc. that may beencountered in a wireless ABR live media streaming environment, whereinthere is usually enough bandwidth in normal condions to both pre-cacheadvertisement clips as well as watch a video or other requestedprogramming simultaneously. As will be seen hereinbelow, a video outagelearning process accompanying one or more implementations is operativeto provide a video QoS-aware location database with respect to anwireless network environment. Accordingly, advertisement segments andother alternative information pre-cached or pre-populated for users maybe taillored to user demographic information and/or outage locations,which provides for an enriched user experience that not only feels lessintrusive but also more informative. Because both pre-caching andstreaming of ABR media segments may be facilitated when adequatebandwith is available in the network, only minimal or no specialimplementational modifications are necessary with respect to depolyingcertain embodiments of the present disclosure in order to receivetailored advertisements. Further, as the advertisement clips typicallyneed less data than normal video streaming, multiple advertisement clipscan be cached once and played back several times, with the ability toupdate the clips relevent to newer video outage areas when needed.Additional benefits and advantages of the embodiments will be apparentin view of the following description and accompanying Figures.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments of the present disclosure are illustrated by way of example,and not by way of limitation, in the Figures of the accompanyingdrawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It shouldbe noted that different references to “an” or “one” embodiment in thisdisclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and suchreferences may mean at least one. Further, when a particular feature,structure, or characteristic is described in connection with anembodiment, it is submitted that it is within the knowledge of oneskilled in the art to effect such feature, structure, or characteristicin connection with other embodiments whether or not explicitlydescribed.

The accompanying drawings are incorporated into and form a part of thespecification to illustrate one or more exemplary embodiments of thepresent disclosure. Various advantages and features of the disclosurewill be understood from the following Detailed Description taken inconnection with the appended claims and with reference to the attacheddrawing Figures in which:

FIG. 1 depicts an example wireless network environment for facilitatingABR live media streaming according to one or more embodiments of thepresent patent application;

FIG. 2 depicts a flowchart of an example methodology for building adatabase of video outage areas (i.e., radio white spot areas) accordingto an embodiment for purposes of the present patent application;

FIGS. 3A-3C depict flowcharts of various blocks, steps and/or acts thatmay be (re)combined in one or more arrangements that illustrate one ormore embodiments of the present patent disclosure for optimizing userexperience while traversing a white spot area of an ABR wireless networkenvironment;

FIGS. 4-10 depict additional details with respect to an example wirelessnetwork environment configured to support ABR live media streaming andassociated methods relating to video white spot coverage in accordancewith one or more embodiments of the present patent disclosure;

FIGS. 11A-11C depict additional details with respect to an examplewireless network environment configured to support ABR live mediastreaming and associated methods relating to video white spot coveragein accordance with another group of embodiments of the present patentdisclosure;

FIGS. 12-16 depict further details with respect to the embodiments shownin FIGS. 11A-11C;

FIG. 17 depicts a block diagram of an example network element configuredto execute certain aspects according to one or more embodiments of thepresent patent application; and

FIG. 18 depicts a block diagram of an example wireless user equipment(UE) device including an ABR client configured to execute certainaspects according to one or more embodiments of the present patentapplication.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the following description, numerous specific details are set forthwith respect to one or more embodiments of the present patentdisclosure. However, it should be understood that one or moreembodiments may be practiced without such specific details. In otherinstances, well-known circuits, subsystems, components, structures andtechniques have not been shown in detail in order not to obscure theunderstanding of the example embodiments. Accordingly, it will beappreciated by one skilled in the art that the embodiments of thepresent disclosure may be practiced without such specific components. Itshould be further recognized that those of ordinary skill in the art,with the aid of the Detailed Description set forth herein and takingreference to the accompanying drawings, will be able to make and use oneor more embodiments without undue experimentation.

Additionally, terms such as “coupled” and “connected,” along with theirderivatives, may be used in the following description, claims, or both.It should be understood that these terms are not necessarily intended assynonyms for each other. “Coupled” may be used to indicate that two ormore elements, which may or may not be in direct physical or electricalcontact with each other, co-operate or interact with each other.“Connected” may be used to indicate the establishment of communication,i.e., a communicative relationship, between two or more elements thatare coupled with each other. Further, in one or more example embodimentsset forth herein, generally speaking, an element, component or modulemay be configured to perform a function if the element is capable ofperforming or otherwise structurally arranged or programmed undersuitable executable code to perform that function.

As used herein, a network element or node may be comprised of one ormore pieces of service network equipment, including hardware andsoftware that communicatively interconnects other equipment on a network(e.g., other network elements, end stations, etc.), and is adapted tohost one or more applications or services with respect to a plurality ofsubscribers. As such, some network elements may be disposed in awireless radio network environment whereas other network elements may bedisposed in a public packet-switched network infrastructure, includingor otherwise involving suitable content delivery network (CDN)infrastructure. In still further arrangements, one or more networkelements may be disposed in a cloud-based platform or datacenter havingsuitable equipment running virtualized functions or applications.Accordingly, at least some network elements may comprise “multipleservices network elements” that provide support for multiplenetwork-based functions (e.g., A/V media management, session control,Quality of Service (QoS) policy enforcement, bandwidth schedulingmanagement, subscriber/device policy and profile management, contentprovider priority policy management, streaming policy management,advertisement push policy management, and the like), in addition toproviding support for multiple application services (e.g., data andmultimedia applications). Subscriber end stations or client devices maycomprise any device configured to execute, inter alia, a streamingclient application (e.g., an ABR streaming client application) forreceiving live media content from one or more content providers, e.g.,via mobile telephony networks based on a variety of radio accesstechnologies, standards and protocols. Such client devices may thereforeinclude portable laptops, netbooks, palm tops, tablets, mobile phones,smartphones, multimedia/video phones, mobile/wireless user equipment,portable media players, portable gaming systems or consoles (such as theWii®, Play Station 3®, etc.) and the like that may access or consumelive media content/services provided over a delivery network or acombination of networks via a suitable high speed wireless connectionfor purposes of one or more embodiments set forth herein. Further, theclient devices may also access or consume content/services provided overbroadcast networks (e.g., cable and satellite networks) as well as apacket-switched wide area public network such as the Internet viasuitable service provider access networks. In a still further variation,the client devices or subscriber end stations may also access or consumecontent/services provided on virtual private networks (VPNs) overlaid on(e.g., tunneled through) the Internet.

One or more embodiments of the present patent disclosure may beimplemented using different combinations of software, firmware, and/orhardware. Thus, one or more of the techniques shown in the Figures(e.g., flowcharts) may be implemented using code and data stored andexecuted on one or more electronic devices or nodes (e.g., a subscriberclient device or end station, a network element, etc.). Such electronicdevices may store and communicate (internally and/or with otherelectronic devices over a network) code and data using computer-readablemedia, such as non-transitory computer-readable storage media (e.g.,magnetic disks, optical disks, random access memory, read-only memory,flash memory devices, phase-change memory, etc.), transitorycomputer-readable transmission media (e.g., electrical, optical,acoustical or other form of propagated signals—such as carrier waves,infrared signals, digital signals), etc. In addition, such networkelements may typically include a set of one or more processors coupledto one or more other components, such as one or more storage devices(e.g., non-transitory machine-readable storage media) as well as storagedatabase(s), user input/output devices (e.g., a keyboard, a touchscreen, a pointing device, and/or a display), and network connectionsfor effectuating signaling and/or bearer media transmission. Thecoupling of the set of processors and other components may be typicallythrough one or more buses and bridges (also termed as bus controllers),arranged in any known (e.g., symmetric/shared multiprocessing) orheretofore unknown architectures. Thus, the storage device or componentof a given electronic device or network element may be configured tostore code and/or data for execution on one or more processors of thatelement, node or electronic device for purposes of implementing one ormore techniques of the present disclosure.

Referring now to the drawings and more particularly to FIG. 1, depictedtherein is an example wireless network environment 100 for facilitatingABR streaming according to one or more embodiments of the present patentapplication. A plurality of exemplary wireless or mobile devices or userequipment (UE) devices 108-1 to 108-N (also referred to as ABR clientdevices) are shown as being operational in the wireless environment 100comprising an exemplary mobile communication network or carrier network102. In the discussion herein, the terms “wireless network,” “mobilecommunication network,” “carrier network”, or terms of similar importmay be used interchangeably to refer to a wireless communication network(e.g., a cellular network, a proprietary data communication network, acorporate-wide wireless network, etc.) that facilitates voice and/ordata communications with different types of wireless mobile devices(e.g., devices 108-1 to 108-N). In one embodiment, such devices may be aUser Equipment (UE) or a Mobile Station (MS) (also known by variousanalogous terms such as “mobile handset,” “wireless handset,” “mobiledevice,” “mobile terminal,” etc.) capable of receiving adaptivelystreamed/delivered audio-visual content from the network 102 and playingit using a local ABR client player application executing thereon. Insome other embodiments, wireless mobile devices may comprise portablegaming devices, electronic tablets, phablets, portable WiFi-connectedTVs, laptops equipped with suitable wireless modems, e-readers, and thelike, as alluded to previously. For purposes of the present invention,the terms “wireless UE device”, “subscriber end station”, “mobiledevice”, “ABR client/player device”, or terms of similar import may beused interchangeably in the context of a particular embodiment.

The wireless UE devices 108-1 to 108-N are shown to be in wirelesscommunication (via respective radio links 110-1 to 110-N) with thewireless network 102 through one or more base stations, e.g., basestation (BS) 104 (also interchangeably referred to herein as a “mobilecommunication network node” or simply a “node”) of the network 102. Theexample base station 104 may provide radio interface (in the form ofsuitable Radio Frequency (RF) links depending on the particular mobilecommunications technology) to devices 108-1 to 108-N via appropriateantenna elements. By way of example, the base station 104 may comprise abase station in a Third Generation (3G) network, or an evolved Node-B(eNodeB or eNB) when the carrier network is a Third GenerationPartnership Project's (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. In someexample embodiments, the base station 104 may also include a sitecontroller, an access point (AP), a radio tower, or any other type ofradio interface device capable of operating in a wireless environment.In addition to providing air interface or wireless channel (e.g., asrepresented by wireless links 110-1 to 110-N) to the wireless UEdevices, the communication node (or base station) 104 may also performradio resource management (as, for example, in case of an eNodeB in anLTE system). In case of a 3G carrier network, example base station 104may include functionalities of a 3G base station along with some or allfunctionalities of a 3G Radio Network Controller (RNC). Additionally,base station 104 may be part of an Access Network (AN) (not shown)portion of the carrier network 102, wherein the AN may be a 3GPPcellular AN or an International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT) RadioAccess Network (RAN) such as, for example, a Universal Terrestrial RadioAccess Network (UTRAN), an Evolved-UTRAN (E-UTRAN), a GSM/EDGE RAN(GERAN), a Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)network, and the like.

Accordingly, where an example subscriber ABR client device may beprovided as a wireless mobile communications device, it may includemulti-band interfacing functionality compliant with at least one of aGeneral Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network, an Enhanced Data Rates forGlobal System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Evolution (EDGE) network,a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)-compliant network (e.g.,Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network, HSPA), a 4Gnetwork (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE) network), a 5G network, a NextGeneration Network (NGN), an Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (IDEN),a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network, a Time Division MultipleAccess (TDMA) network, an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks, etc.in addition to having short-range radio access based on a standardselected from at least one of IEEE 802.11 standard, IEEE 802.16standard, HiperLan standard, HiperLan II standard, Wi-Max standard,OpenAir standard, Bluetooth standard, etc.

Broadly, the infrastructure of an example network 102 may include anetwork controller 106 coupled to the base station 104 for providinglogical and control functions relative to, e.g., roaming support and/orterminal mobility management, subscriber account management, billing,etc., as well as accessing of external networks or communicationentities and delivery of streamed A/V content from one or more contentsources. By way of example, connectivity to other networks orinfrastructures such as, for instance, the Internet or a cloud platform112, CDN 116 and a circuit-switched landline telephone network (i.e., aPublic-Switched Telephone Network or PSTN) 114, is illustrated, at leasta portion of which may be coupled to one or more live media sources orproviders 115. Media content from live sources 115 may comprise liveprogramming captured relative to any type of event, e.g.,sporting/entertainment/gaming events, concerts, live TV shows, live newsbroadcasting, etc.

In case of an LTE carrier network, network controller 106 may includesome or all functionalities of an Access Gateway (AGW) or an EvolvedPacket Core (EPC) node. In certain embodiments, such functionalities maycomprise, for example, an IMT core network functionality or an ETSITISPAN (European Telecommunications Standards Institute TIPHON(Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization over Networks)and SPAN (Services and Protocols for Advanced Networks)) core networkfunctionality. Regardless of a particular implementation of the carriernetwork, base station 104 and/or network controller functionality 106may be configured to facilitate, in conjunction with or independent ofone or more external network entities and databases, a scheme forcontrolling delivery of ABR live media streaming sessions to wireless UEdevices in potential video outage areas that may be encountered in thewireless network environment 100, as will be set forth in detailhereinbelow.

Skilled artisans will further recognize that various nodes andfunctionalities set forth above with respect to the network environment100 (for instance, access network elements (e.g., base stationcontrollers (BSCs), base transceiver stations (BTSs), radio networkcontrollers (RNCs), etc.) as well as CDN infrastructures, media providerinfrastructures, and the like, may be virtualized using suitable networkfunction virtualization (NFV) architectures implemented in one or morecloud-based data centers or platforms as exemplified by theInternet/cloud platform 112. Additionally, certain aspects of thesubscriber devices 108-1 to 108-N may also be virtualized in a cloudand/or provided as software-centric applications that can be local(i.e., on the device).

FIG. 2 depicts a flowchart of an example methodology 200 for building adatabase of video outage areas (i.e., radio white spot areas) accordingto an embodiment for purposes of the present patent application. Asshown at block 202 in FIG. 2, a network entity (e.g., in the carriernetwork 102 or a subscriber policy management node associated with CDN116 of FIG. 1) may initially determine a minimum threshold bitrate(e.g., for enforcing a QoS policy) authorized under an adaptivestreaming technique used by a mobile device (e.g., wireless UE device108-1) to play an audio/visual content file or program. The networkentity may then monitor whether a current audio/visual segment is beingdelivered to the wireless UE device at a delivery bitrate that is lowerthan the threshold bitrate (block 204). When the delivery bitrate of thecurrent streaming segment is determined to be lower than the thresholdbitrate, the network entity may obtain the geographic locationcoordinates for the wireless UE device (block 206) because such reduceddelivery bitrate may indicate a less than acceptable service, possiblydue to various radio signal quality conditions, including a radio outagecondition. Thereafter, the network entity may report those geographicallocation coordinates for storage into a database (block 208), which maybe configured to maintain a dataset of geo-locations (e.g., in the formof location coordinates) with respect to the geographical area of thenetwork 102 that have a less-than-desired radio coverage. Those skilledin the art will recognize that the dataset of video outage areas is notstatic and may not necessarily mean that there is a complete radiooutage at the reported locations. Depending on variable signalparameters, improvements to the infrastructure, changes in theenvironmental and structural elements (e.g., buildings, towers, etc.)within the wireless network environment, and the like, a locationdatabase of potential white spot areas may be continually and/ordynamically updated as needed (i.e., by way of a learning process).Furthermore, white spot area databases and/or server systems hostingsuch databases may be provided with suitable application programinterfaces or APIs that facilitate interaction with other networkentities and services, e.g., including bandwidth control. Additionaldetails regarding such techniques may be found in one or more of thefollowing commonly owned co-pending U.S. patent application(s): (i)“ADAPTIVE VIDEO WHITE SPOT LEARNING AND USER BANDWIDTH DELIVERY CONTROLSYSTEM” (Ericsson Ref. No.: P40959-US1), application Ser. No.14/036,841, filed Sep. 25, 2013, published as US 2015/0085875, in thename(s) of Christopher Phillips et al.; and (ii) “ABR VIDEO WHITE SPOTCOVERAGE SYSTEM AND METHOD” (Ericsson Ref. No.: P42807-US1), applicationSer. No. 14/200,491, filed Mar. 7, 2014, published as US 2015/0256581,in the name(s) of Christopher Phillips et al.; hereby incorporated byreference herein.

FIGS. 3A-3C depict flowcharts of various blocks, steps and/or acts thatmay be combined in one or more arrangements that illustrate one or moreembodiments of the present patent disclosure for optimizing userexperience while traversing a radio white spot area of a wirelessnetwork configured for supporting an ABR live media streamingenvironment. Reference numeral 300A in FIG. 3A generally refers to abroad methodology for providing radio white spot coverage for a wirelessUE device engaged in an ABR live media streaming session according toone embodiment. For purposes of the present patent application, thewireless UE device may be configured to receive or otherwise consume avariety of live content via streaming sessions effectuated over asuitable wireless connection (e.g., via broadcast, narrowcast, multicastor unicast), which streaming sessions may at least partly involvedelivery or distribution of convent via a delivery network such as CDN116 disposed between the wireless network serving the wireless UE device(regardless of whether the wireless network is a home network or avisited network) and one or more live media sources 115. As one skilledin the art will appreciate, example CDN 116 may comprise an overlaynetwork architected for high-performance streaming of a variety of livedigital assets or program assets as well as services (hereinafterreferred to as “content”) to subscribers, including wireless/mobileequipment users, using one or more Internet-based infrastructures,private/dedicated infrastructures or a combination thereof. In general,the terms “content”, “content files”, or “media segments” or “mediastream” and the like as used in reference to at least some embodimentsof the present patent disclosure may include a variety of liveprogramming media or digital assets and program assets appropriatelyprocessed at a network entity. In addition, those skilled in the artwill further recognize that an example streaming network environment maybe architected as a hierarchical organization wherein the variouscontent sources and associated media processing systems (media encoders,segmentation and packaging, etc.), back office management systems,subscriber/content policy and QoS management systems, bandwidthallocation modules, and the like may be disposed at differenthierarchical levels of the network architecture in an illustrativeimplementation, e.g., super headend (SHE) nodes, regional headend (RHE)nodes, video hub office (VHO) nodes, IPTV service nodes, etc. thatultimately provide the media content streams to one or more serving edgenode portions and associated radio/wireless access networks for furtherdistribution to subscribers, wherein the live media may be encoded usingstandards or specifications including but not limited to, e.g., MovingPictures Expert Group (MPEG) codecs (MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc.), H.264codecs, High Efficiency Video Coding or HEVC (H.265) codecs, and thelike.

Additionally, the live media streams may also include advertisementsinserted at various levels, e.g., national network levels, regionalnetwork levels, and/or local network levels. At the national networklevel, advertisements are often inserted into the network feed beforethe broadcast content is transmitted over, for example, a particularnational distribution network. At the regional network level, localadvertisements may be inserted into a received national feed by, forexample, the regional/local radio or TV broadcast station and suchadvertisements may typically replace some or all of the national networkadvertisements. Such local advertisements may be targeted to theparticular demographics of the subscribers of a broadcast stationservice area and may advertise any number/type of local businesses,e.g., local grocery stores, restaurants, etc. In the context of digitallive media transmission, an ABR streaming infrastructure may utilizeANSI/SCTE-35 based processes to indicate appropriate cue-in and cue-outavails (for signaling ad insertion markers and ad endpoint markers) tocombine a primary stream (e.g., live programming media content) and asecondary stream (e.g., advertisement content) in a particular streamingsession, wherein appropriate manifests may be provided to the ABRclients with respect to both types of content as needed.

By way of illustration, content delivered via the serving wirelessnetwork (e.g., carrier network 102) may be streamed using suitable ABRstreaming techniques to support Microsoft® Silverlight® SmoothStreaming, HTTP streaming (for instance, MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streamingover HTTP or DASH, HTTP Live Streaming or HLS, HTTP Dynamic Streaming orHDS, etc.), Icecast, and so on.

In one arrangement, the overlay architecture of CDN 116 may include amulti-level, hierarchically-organized interconnected assembly of networkservers for providing media pathways or “pipes” from one or more centraldistribution nodes to one or more levels of regional distribution nodesthat are connected to one or more local edge servers and/or radionetwork entities configured to serve a plurality of end users orsubscribers in respective serving location areas. In addition to such“distribution servers”, CDN 116 may also include and/or interoperatewith various network elements configured to effectuate requestredirection or rerouting mechanisms as well as related back officesystems or nodes that may be deployed as part of a streaming networkback office infrastructure (not specifically shown in FIG. 1).

Continuing to refer to FIG. 3A, a determination may be made at block 302that the wireless UE device including a suitable ABR client or playerand currently engaged in an ABR live media streaming session is headingtowards and/or entering a radio white spot area based on a variety oftechniques for positioning/locating and estimating a travel direction ofa mobile device known in the art. For example, such techniques maycomprise positioning methods based on radio cell coverage, GlobalPositioning System (GPS), Assisted GPS (A-GPS), Global NavigationSatellite System (GLONASS), Galileo, or other satellite basedsystems/methods, or Time-Of-Arrival (TOA), Uplink Time Difference OfArrival (UTDOA), Observed Time Difference Of Arrival (OTDOA), orEnhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) methods. In general,additional description of the positioning methods in a cellular networkmay be found in such 3GPP Technical Specifications (TS) as, for example,the TS 36.305 (E-UTRAN; Stage 2 functional specification of UEpositioning in E-UTRAN), the TS 25.305 (Stage 2 functional specificationof UE positioning in UTRAN), and TS 43.059 (Functional stage 2description of Location Services (LCS) in GERAN). Many of thesepositioning methods may be based on network triangulation, Wi-Fipositioning, and/or wireless UE device's internal sources such asaccelerometers, position sensors, etc., in addition to utilizingspeed/direction estimations of a vehicle in which the wireless UE devicemay be operating. Accordingly, given a set of current locationcoordinates of the wireless UE device as well as a speed/directionestimate a moving vehicle associated therewith, it can be anticipated asto where and when the vehicle and its UE device will encounter radiowhite spots over a projected route and/or duration of time by querying asuitable video outage database. Hereinafter, the terms “vehicle” and“wireless UE device” operating therein will be used somewhatinterchangeably for purposes of the example embodiments unless otherwiseexpressly noted. Furthermore, it shall be apparent that the vehicle withwhich an ABR streaming-capable UE device is associated may comprise anypublic or private transportation means, e.g., cars, trucks,two-wheelers, buses, trains, etc. As will be set forth in further detailbelow, appropriate ad segments may be preloaded or otherwise pushed tothe UE device that are specific to the video outage area and/ordemographic profile of the user.

Thereafter, upon ascertaining that the wireless UE device is in a radiowhite spot area, a further determination may be made to time-shift thecurrent ABR live media streaming session of the wireless UE device(block 304). Such time-shifting may take place immediately or at someother relevant point with respect to the media segments being streamed,e.g., upon completion of a current media segment. Further, the ABRclient of the wireless UE device may be instructed to commence playbackof other content preloaded into a local cache or otherwise buffered atthe wireless UE device while the ABR streaming session is in atime-shifted mode. As noted above, the locally available alternativecontent and its amount may preferably comprise advertisement contentthat may be relevant with respect to (i) the video outage area that thewireless UE device is in; (ii) user profile and/or demographicinformation of the wireless UE device user; (iii) the user's estimatedtravel route passing through the video outage area; (iv) the contenttype or subject matter of the particular ABR live media, and/or someother user- or network-specified information identified for preloading,etc., in any combination thereof. The amount of such alternative contentavailable for playback or play-out may be predetermined based on theestimated time it may take for the vehicle/UE device to traverse aparticular video outage area. In one arrangement, the preloadedadvertisement content may be pushed to the wireless UE device prior tothe device entering the video outage area, which may comprise one ormore targeted local, regional and/or national advertisement segmentsbased on a number of factors. At some future time, based on determiningthat the wireless UE device is exiting the video outage area or lapse ofa known estimate of time required to traverse the video outage area, thetime-shifted ABR streaming session may be (re)commenced or resumed fromthe point where it was suspended (e.g., from a media segment adjacent tothe particular segment that was last played), as set forth at blocks 306and 308.

Reference numeral 300B in FIG. 3B generally refers to at least a portionof additional features and associated blocks that may be added,replaced, or supplemented, either alone or in any combination, inrespect of the white spot area coverage process 300A described above. Asone skilled in the art will appreciate, ABR streaming techniques allowfor streaming of content encoded at varying bitrates, depending upon,inter alia, network bandwidth conditions, client resources, radio signalquality, etc. For example, a user's bandwidth and processing capacitymay be detected in real time, and the quality of video stream may beadjusted accordingly. Initially, source content is transcoded orotherwise encoded with different bit rates (e.g., multi-ratetranscoding). For example, a particular content may be transcoded intofive video files using variable bit rates, ranging from low to high bitrates. The particular content is therefore encoded as five different“versions” or “formats”, wherein each bit rate is called a profile orrepresentation. The encoded content is divided into fixed durationsegments or chunks, which are typically between two and ten seconds induration. Whereas shorter segments may reduce coding efficiency, largersegments may impact the adaptability to changes in network throughput,radio conditions, and/or fast changing client behavior. Regardless ofthe chunk size, the segments may be Group-of-Pictures (GOP)-aligned suchthat all encoding profiles have the same segments. A suitable ManifestFile is created that describes the encoding rates and includes UniversalResource Locator (URL) pointers relative to the various segments ofencoded content. In one implementation, the Manifest File (MF), aDelivery Format (DF) and means for conversion from/to existing FileFormats (FF) and Transport Streams (TS) may be provided to a clientdevice when a particular content is requested, which uses HTTP to fetchthe encoded segments from the content provider network, provided thereis no bandwidth conflict and/or radio signal deterioration. The receivedsegments may be buffered, as needed, and decoded and played back (i.e.,rendered) in sequence by the ABR client running on a UE. In the contextof MPEG-DASH streaming, manifest file information may be provided in oneor more hierarchically-organized metadata structures referred to asMedia Presentation Description (MPD) files (more generally, mediapresentation data structures). Broadly, an MPD structure is anExtensible Markup Language (XML) document that describes segmentinformation (timing, absolute/relative URLs, media characteristics suchas video resolution and bitrates).

Accordingly, by virtue of the manifest file information, the ABR clientis made aware of the available streams at different bitrates, andsegments of the streams, whereby the client can switch between streamingthe different encoded segments depending on available network resources.For example, when the network throughput has deteriorated, e.g., as awireless UE device approaches a video outage area, the ABR client mayfind that the download speed for a currently-downloaded segment is lowerthan the bit rate (or, synonymously “bitrate”) specified for thatsegment in the manifest file. In that event, the client may request thatthe next segment be at that lower bitrate. Similarly, if the clientfinds that the download speed of the currently-downloaded segment isgreater than the manifest file-specified bitrate of the segmentdownloaded, then the client may request that next segments be at thathigher bitrate. Therefore, it should be recognized that an ABR buffermay contain requested media segments at different video qualities (e.g.,lower bitrate content having a lower quality versus higher bitratecontent having a correspondingly higher quality). Accordingly, beforedetermining to time-shit an ongoing ABR live media streaming session dueto, for example, encountering a video outage area, a decision may bemade to continue to play back the lower bitrate media segments that havebeen previously downloaded into the ABR buffer (block 352). Playback ofsuch lower bitrate content may take place until the ABR buffer iscompletely exhausted or, if the buffer has stored progressively lowerquality segments, upon reaching a certain minimum threshold qualityacceptable to the user. Further, either upon exhausting the buffer orreaching the quality threshold, one or more notifications may beprovided to the user that the wireless UE client device is entering orhas entered an outage area and/or the video quality is unacceptable. Thenotifications may also indicate that the current ABR live mediastreaming session is being time-shifted (e.g., for a certain estimatedduration) and alternative content (e.g., advertisements) may be playedback instead (block 354). Similarly, when the wireless UE client deviceis exiting or out of a radio white spot, appropriate messages may beprovided with respect to resuming the time-shifted ABR live mediastreaming session (block 356).

FIG. 3C depicts still further additional features and associated blocksthat may be added, rearranged, modified, or supplemented, either aloneor in any combination, in respect of the processes set forth in FIGS. 3Aand 3B. Block 372 refers to features relating to pre-populating orpreloading alternative/advertisement content into a wireless UE devicewhen the radio conditions of a wireless network permit. As illustrated,parameters such as signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, interference levels, andother channel conditions may be monitored or determined to be such thatthe signal quality may be sufficiently high, thereby permittingstreaming/downloading of alternative content, e.g., advertisements, fromappropriate content sources (e.g., an advertisement campaign server) inaddition to streaming of any requested content at a sufficient quality.Rather than playing back the alternative content immediately, it may bestored in a local cache (e.g., different from the ABR client's buffer).In one embodiment, when the wireless UE device is in a known white spotarea, appropriate content is moved from the local cache into the ABRbuffer for playback, which may be triggered responsive to network-basedmessaging or UE device determination (block 374). Thereafter, thealternative content is played out from the ABR buffer based on modifiedmanifest files that reference to the internal cache location (block376).

It should be appreciated that the foregoing blocks, steps and/or acts ofFIGS. 3A-3C may be arranged or re-arranged in several combinations,which may be executed at different locations or at co-located networkelements or nodes within a wireless network environment such as theexample network environment 100 illustrated in FIG. 1. Further,time-shifting of live media and advertisement preloading may be at leastpartially implemented in a network-controlled arrangement involving ageneric ABR client) or in a client-centric configuration (e.g., for aclient-controlled implementation involving a custom ABR client),depending on where some of the foregoing blocks, steps and/or acts maytake place. Additional details with respect to one or more of suchembodiments may be exemplified in view of the following Figuresdescribed below.

Generally, in a normal, fully connected radio area of the wirelessnetwork environment of FIG. 1, there is bandwidth enough to bothpre-cache advertisement clips as well as watch live contentsimultaneously. It should therefore be appreciated that an embodiment ofthe present invention may be implemented without substantialmodifications at the end-user side to make the wireless UE device readyfor white spot advertisements (i.e., “priming” of the UE device).According to an implementation, the advertisements may be cached justonce in the UE device, so that only updated clips need to be downloadedwhen they are released to the video service subscribers. This means thatthe ad clips (and any updates) need less data than the normal video,since each advertisement clip can be cached once and played back severaltimes. Accordingly, compared to how normal advertisements are providedin wired networks (e.g., cable TV networks), it should be appreciatedthat an ad playback arrangement of the present invention facilitates abetter situation for the end-user, the operator and the content providerin an ABR live media streaming environment (e.g., in terms of bandwidthsavings, optimized network resources, overall quality, etc.).

As noted previously, redirection to locally stored ad content (i.e., onthe device) can be facilitated in a network-controlled manner in oneconfiguration. In such an arrangement, when an network node, e.g., a ABRvideo delivery server disposed in an access network arrangement or as avirtual function in a cloud implementation, determines when the clientdevice is in an outage area, it requests for a time-shift subsystem(which could be at an access/core network, CDN, or even at a cloudplatform) to begin recording the live content for the client's livemedia streaming session. The live session may therefore be referred toas a time-shifted session during or after an outage area in one exampleimplementation. The network node may also be configured to dynamicallyadjust the manifest URLs to reference the stored buffer locations insidethe ABR client device where the ads have been stored. In addition, apersistent connection can be maintained in a number of ways as will bedescribed in detail below to keep the live session alive. For instance,if the time-shift system begins storing segments at an RNC node andmaintains a time-shift manifest, the live session's starting/resumingpoint for the session may also be maintained thereat. In an examplearrangement, session states for maintaining persistent connections withthe ABR clients may be identified using the International MobileEquipment Identity (IMEI), International Mobile Subscriber Identity(IMSI), mobile identification number (MIN), electronic serial number(ESN), MAC address or any other unique identifiers associated with theconsumer/subscriber devices. Preferably, a live video session IDassociated with the streaming session may be maintained to besatisfactory as long as the time-shift system keeps the session aliveand stores the time-shifted media/manifests mapped to the session ID.Once the client device is outside of the ABR live video outage area, themanifest is adjusted to the next segment beyond the last segmentdelivered to the client at live video outage time, allowing the clientto resume playback from the last live video segment played prior toentering the outage area.

FIGS. 4-10 depict additional details with respect to an example wirelessnetwork environment configured to support ABR live media streaming andassociated methods according to a network-controlled implementation ofthe present patent disclosure wherein a generic or legacy ABR client ordevice is operative for consuming content. Specifically, FIGS. 4 and 5depict a wireless network environment 400 and associated processing 500for effectuating network-controlled pre-caching or pre-populatingadvertisement content in a wireless UE device having an ABR clientapplication and disposed in or otherwise associated with a vehicle,collectively referred to by reference numeral 410. FIG. 6 depicts aportion 600 of the network environment 400 wherein an advertisement playout process 700A may be practiced according to the embodiment shown inFIG. 7A. FIG. 7B depicts a flowchart for maintaining connectionpersistency and credit allocation for advertisements according to anexample embodiment. FIGS. 7C and 7D depict flowcharts relating toadditional processes that may be combined or intermixed with otherflowcharts of the present patent application. FIG. 8 depicts a portion800 of the network environment 400 wherein an ABR streaming sessionresumption process 900 may be practiced for starting playback oftime-shifted media according to the embodiment shown in FIG. 9. FIG. 10depicts another network rendition 1000 corresponding to the networkenvironment 400 wherein location-specific advertisements may bepre-cached as the wireless UE device is anticipated to encounter anotheroutage area of the network.

Taking reference to FIG. 4, the example wireless environment 400 isillustratively shown as comprising a plurality of coverage areas, e.g.,areas 404-1 to 404-3, effectuated by appropriate wireless networkinfrastructure elements, e.g., base stations 402-1 to 402-3,corresponding thereto. As is known in the art, a radio coverage area bya base station may take any shape and include varying levels of signalquality and strength, wherein there may be some coverage gap dependingon a number of factors. Illustratively, coverage areas 404-1 to 404-3are exemplified as circular regions, each having a plurality ofconcentric signal quality/strength contours. By way of example, coveragearea 404-3 is shown to include three such contours 406-1 to 406-3, eachdepicted with a respective signal level indicator icon, 412-1 to 412-3,respectively. Contour 406-1 having the highest signal quality is closestto base station 402-3, whereas contours 406-2 and 406-3 are spacedfurther away from the base station, with progressively deterioratingsignal quality (i.e., strength, level, etc.). A radio white spot area orvideo outage area 408, which may take any shape, is illustratively shownas being disposed where the three coverage areas 404-1 to 404-3 cometogether. A UE-carrying vehicle 410 is illustratively shown astraversing from coverage area 404-3 to coverage 404-2, potentially via apath or route 401 that may traverse the video outage area 408.

To facilitate ABR live media streaming and advertisement pushing, anumber of network nodes or elements may be configured to interface withor otherwise be included as part of the wireless network environment. Amobile-optimized ABR stream delivery server 414, which may be providedas part of a network controller node (e.g., an RNC) or as a virtualizedfunction at a cloud provider, is configured to deliver ABR live mediacontent to wireless UE devices via respective sessions establishedthrough the serving base stations of the wireless network environment,wherein the content being delivered may originate from any number oflive content sources and/or may involve appropriate CDN infrastructureelements (not shown in FIG. 4). Accordingly, at least in one embodiment,the ABR stream delivery server 414 may be provided with appropriateradio interfaces with respect to the serving base stations and may beconfigured to maintain/monitor UE devices' real-time mobile sessions.The ABR stream delivery server 414 may also interface with a videoquality location awareness server 418 and associated geo-locationdatabase 420 having relevant video outage information. In oneimplementation, such a database may be developed using a learningprocess described above with respect to FIG. 2, which may be augmentedwith additional features set forth in one or more of the commonly ownedpatent applications incorporated by reference elsewhere in this patentapplication. A Segment Encoding and User Session Segment Delivery and AdContent Push control module 416 (also referred to as a “delivery module”or “delivery control module” herein) may monitor deliverybitrate/bandwidth for the streaming content delivered by the ABR streamdelivery server 414 as well as effectuate the delivery of alternativecontent (e.g., advertisements) as will be discussed in more detailbelow. In one embodiment, the delivery module 416 may be integrated aspart of the ABR stream delivery server 414 which may be configured toprovide manifest files for the ad content to the UE devices in additionto media segments delivered to the UEs pursuant to respective ABR livemedia streaming sessions. The ABR stream delivery server 414 and/orassociated delivery control module 416 may therefore be interfaced, inone embodiment, with a suitable advertisement campaign management andmedia system 426 having a advertisement media segment database 428, foraccess via a public packet-switched network such as the Internet or anoperator network, cumulatively referred to by reference numeral 424.

The ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated delivery controlmodule 416 may also be interfaced, in a network-controlledimplementation, to a video message generation system 422 for generatingand providing appropriate notifications and/or messages to the wirelessUEs as they enter or approach and/or exit a video outage area. In oneembodiment, such notification messages may comprise a video-encodedstill image of a message (text, graphics, etc.) configured to apprisethe user of any information relevant with respect to the streamingsession, e.g., to the effect that an outage has occurred and/oradvertisement content may be played in lieu of current live mediastreaming session. Such service outage message notifications may alsoinclude relevant timing durations, e.g., how long a service outage maylast, or some predetermined time window, for instance. The video-encodedstill image, which may be encoded at a low bitrate, may be provided orotherwise delivered to the UE devices when the radio conditions permit(i.e., having sufficient bandwidth while continuing to effectuate theABR live streaming sessions), using suitable manifest files and/orredirection techniques as set forth in additional detail in one or moreof the following commonly owned co-pending U.S. patent application(s):(i) “CONFLICT DETECTION AND RESOLUTION IN AN ABR NETWORK” (Ericsson Ref.No.: P42221-US1), application Ser. No. 14/194,868, filed Mar. 3, 2014,in the name(s) of Christopher Phillips et al., published as US2015/0249622; and (ii) “CONFLICT DETECTION AND RESOLUTION IN AN ABRNETWORK USING CLIENT INTERACTIVITY” (Ericsson Ref. No.: P42767-US1),application Ser. No. 14/194,918, filed Mar. 3, 2014, in the name(s) ofChristopher Phillips et al., published as US 2015/0249623, herebyincorporated by reference herein.

Turning to FIG. 5, an advertisement content push process 500 in anetwork-controlled implementation may now be described in conjunctionwith the network arrangement of FIG. 4. In a normal streaming operation(e.g., under suitable radio conditions supportive of sufficientbandwidth), the UE device 410 is engaged in receiving high bitrate liveABR media segments (e.g., 2 Mbs segments) and associated manifests viaits serving base station 402-3 shown in FIG. 4 as an ABR live mediastreaming session 448 (block 502). A suitable network entity, e.g., theABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated delivery control module416 may initially determine if the ABR streaming session's manifest isencrypted (block 504). If so, no further monitoring takes place and theprocessing for pre-population of advertisement content may subsequentlyterminate (block 508). If the manifest file is not encrypted, thenetwork entity may parse the manifest file for ABR profiles (block 506),i.e., the media segment bitrates specified in the manifest file for thecurrent ABR live media streaming session. A determination may be madewhether the overall bandwidth of the wireless UE device 410 exceeds aparticular bitrate quality, e.g., a highest bitrate indicated in thelive media manifest file, that is, if there exists additional mobilebandwidth over and above the bandwidth necessary to support pulling themedia segments with the highest bitrate specified in the manifest file(block 510). If not, a further determination may be made to verifywhether the video session of the wireless/mobile UE device 410 is stillactive (block 512). If it is determined that the wireless UE device'svideo session is not active, further monitoring and processing forpre-population of advertisement content may be terminated or otherwiseexited (block 508). On the other hand, if it is determined that thewireless UE device's video session is active, the process flow may loopback to checking again whether there exists additional bandwidth (block510). In one variation, such a process loop may involve waiting for acertain period of time before re-determining additional bandwidthavailability.

If there is additional bandwidth as determined at block 510, a furtherdetermination may be made to determine at least one of a location anddirection of travel associated with the UE-carrying vehicle 410 (block514). As explained previously, such a determination may be effectuatedusing any known or heretofore unknown location techniques available withrespect to the wireless network environment 400 depending on its radiotechnology implementation. Thereafter, one or more determinations may bemade as to whether the UE-carrying vehicle 410 is headed in a directionlikely to encounter a video outage area (i.e., a radio white spot), andif so, what its coordinates are and how long it will take to traversethrough it, which determinations/decisions and associated calculationsmay be effectuated by way of one or more request/response mechanismswith respect to the video quality location awareness server 418 andassociated geo-location database 420 having relevant video outageinformation, as set forth at blocks 516, 518, 520 and 522.Illustratively, a request/query 430 to the video quality locationawareness server 418 may comprise:

-   -   Request anticipated Video Outage;    -   Location: Client Location: 19.9423 Deg North; 155.9985 Deg West;    -   Heading: 110 Deg East;    -   Speed: 60 mph

Responsive thereto, the video quality location awareness server 418 mayprovide a response 432 that comprises the following with respect to thetravel path 401:

-   -   Response;    -   Outage Begin 19.0323 Deg North; 155.0012 Deg West;    -   Interval: 5 min 30 Sec

In one arrangement, the video quality location awareness server 418and/or its associated database 420 may be provided at an RNC node or maybe virtualized at a cloud-based node. Regardless of how or where thevideo quality location awareness is implemented, if the current headingis determined to indicate no upcoming outage, further monitoring andprocessing for pre-population of advertisement content may beterminated, provided the live media streaming session is not active asset forth before (blocks 512, 508). Otherwise, upon obtaining locationcoordinates of the video outage area and calculating estimated traveltime through video outage (blocks 520, 522), one or morerequest/response mechanisms may be carried out with respect to thealternative content server/system 426 and associated ad media segmentdatabase 428 via network 424 for obtaining suggested advertisements thatcover the outage area time (blocks 524, 526). In FIG. 4, suchinteractions are illustratively shown as a request/response mechanism,wherein an example request/query 440 may include the following input:

-   -   Calculated Outage Location;    -   Location: Client Location: 19.0323 Deg North; 155.0012 Deg West;    -   User Demographic Information: Age, Gender, Etc.

Responsive thereto, an example response 442 may include the followinginformation:

-   -   6 advertisement clips/segments;    -   (Location-specific and/or User-specific);    -   Total time=Calculated Video Outage Interval of 5 min 30 Sec

Further, the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated deliverycontrol module 416 may effectuate additional request/responsemechanisms, e.g., request 434 and response 436, with respect to thevideo message generation system 422 for generating/obtaining one or morecustom message segments, e.g., a customer message stating: “You areapproaching a video outage or in an area of low quality. Your ETA toleave outage area is xx minutes. Your Video will resume in xx minutes”(block 528). Thereafter, the network entity 414/416 may commence managedbandwidth push of advertisement media segment(s) and associatedmanifest(s) as well as the custom message notification(s) and associatedmanifest(s) to the wireless UE device 410 with a throttled delivery ratebased on an amount by which the device's overall bandwidth exceeds thehighest bitrate indicated in the manifest file of the current ABRstreaming session (block 530), which is illustratively shown in FIG. 4as ad media and message push path 446 to the serving base station 402-3.

Referring now to FIG. 6, depicted therein is a portion 600 of thenetwork environment 400 described above in detail. It should berecognized that at least certain portions of the description of FIG. 4are equally applicable with respect to the wireless network environmentportion 600, mutatis mutandis, wherein an advertisement play out process700A may be practiced according to an embodiment shown in FIG. 7A. Asthe UE-carrying vehicle 410 continues to travel towards coverage area404-2 served by the base station 402-2, it begins to experienceprogressively lower quality radio coverage locations of the coveragearea 404-3 before entering the video outage area 408. Pursuant to suchsignal deterioration and/or other methods of localization describedherein, the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated deliverycontrol module 416 may determine that the UE-carrying vehicle or client410 has encountered a loss of video coverage area (block 702).Responsive thereto, service logic provided at the ABR stream deliveryserver 414 and/or associated delivery control module 416 is operative inone embodiment to update or otherwise modify location pointers of theABR live media streaming session to be replaced by the pointersassociated with the pre-populated user/location-specific ad contentand/or custom message notifications that reference the wireless UEdevice's internal or local cache where such content was downloaded andstored. That is, the manifest URLs that would have pointed to locationselsewhere in the network with respect to the ABR live media segments arereplaced with URLs that point to a local storage file path, theimplementation of which may depend on the device's software (i.e.,operating system or other control software), which are then transmittedto the wireless UE device 410 (blocks 704, 706). It should beappreciated that although the radio signal quality may be less thandesirable or sufficient for purposes of ABR streaming of live mediacontent, the wireless UE device 410 may continue to be in radiocommunication with one or more base stations, e.g., 402-1 to 402-3, asit approaches/enters any white spots along the way, which may beadequate for sending the updated manifest files via any suitable means.In FIG. 6, a path 602 is illustrative of transmission of updatedmanifests to base station 402-3 that contain pointers to the content(cached at the wireless UE device 410) whose playback is estimated orotherwise calculated to take up the time required to traverse the videooutage area 408. In one implementation, the updated manifest file(s) maycontain URLs that take on a form such as, e.g., file://<filename andpath to segment>, depending on the device software. In someimplementations, the device software may not allow accessing suchinternal references by the ABR client application executing thereon. Insuch a scenario, a local HTTP server functionality may be provided aspart of the wireless UE device's software architecture, whereby updatedmanifests may accordingly include URLs pointing to the local HTTP serverin a manner that is more acceptable. For example, an illustrative URLreferencing local HTTP server may take on the form:http://127.0.0.1/message/. Additional subject matter relative tomanipulation, updating or modification of URLs and/or manifest files maybe found in one or more of the following commonly owned co-pending U.S.patent application(s): (i) “TIME-SENSITIVE CONTENT MANIPULATION INADAPTIVE STREAMING BUFFER” (Ericsson Ref. No.: P39531-US1), applicationSer. No. 14/179,876, filed Feb. 13, 2014, in the name(s) of JenniferReynolds et al., issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,210,207, hereby incorporatedby reference herein.

Responsive to receiving the updated manifest files, the ABR clientapplication executing on the wireless UE device is operative to play outthe locally stored message segment (e.g., video-encoded still image of atext to the effect that it has entered a video outage area and playbackof the video session will resume once the video outage area is exited).After the notification message playback, the ABR client application maycommence playback of the locally stored advertisement content based onthe sequence of associated manifest URLs as set forth at block 708. Suchnotification messages may be rendered and displayed via a suitabledisplay to the user. Additional messaging may also follow to inform theuser that the ABR live media streaming session is being time-shifted(e.g., for an estimated duration of time) and will be resumed once thevideo outage area is exited, as noted previously. Optionally, anothermessage may be provided to the user informing that if ad playout isexited, the time-shifted session will be lost, with the possibility thata portion of the live media will not be available for playback when thestreaming session is resumed, as set forth at block 710. After suitableservice outage notifications, messages and alerts, etc., as set forthabove, locally buffered ad segments may be played out, which may involvemoving the ad segments from a local cache to an ABR buffer that the ABRclient application accesses (block 712).

Also, responsive to the determination that the wireless UE deviceexecuting the ABR client application has entered the video outage area,a request 606 may be caused to be transmitted to a live ABR deliverysubsystem having time-shift (TS) functionality 608 (shown in FIG. 6).Preferably, the live ABR delivery/TS subsystem 608 may be configured toeffectuate one or more ABR live media streaming sessions in conjunctionwith the mobile-optimized ABR stream delivery server 414. Accordingly,the live ABR delivery subsystem 608 may be provided with suitableinterfaces for receiving live media segments encoded at differentbitrates 622 and associated live media manifests 620 with respect toeach of the ABR live media streaming sessions from one or more upstreamlive media sources or server nodes. A database 610 associated with thelive ABR delivery subsystem 608 may be configured to store manifests,time-shifted segments for all bitrates for each time-shifted sessionthat may be identified by a unique session identifier associatedtherewith, which may be maintained for configurable time durations forperforming suitable time-shifting operations as will be set forth below.

Continuing to refer to FIG. 7A, block 714 is illustrative of a request606 for time-shifting a particular streaming session, which may beinitiated responsive to the determination that the wireless UE/ABRclient has entered the video outage area. As noted at block 714, such arequest may include the user session identity <session id> as well as anoutage duration indication in seconds, for example. Responsive to therequest 606 as well as additional input parameters comprising, e.g., asession timeout threshold or ceiling value 716 and an ad credit shiftlimit value 718, various processes and/or sub-processes may be executedat one or more nodes or cloud-based virtual functions for maintainingthe session in an active state, i.e., connection persistency, enablingcredit allocation for advertisements and related time-shiftingoperations, collectively shown at block 720.

FIG. 7B depicts various operations, actions and blocks that may takeplace at least in some combinations as a process 700B for performing orcausing to perform while a live media session ID is maintained to beactive. One skilled in the art will recognize that live media sessions(and server connections therefor) may be maintained using a number oftechniques. In one embodiment, a session/connection timeout parametermay be provided as input (e.g., session timeout threshold value 716) toa decision process to determine for how long TS operations need to beexecuted, which decision process may be modulated depending on theestimated outage duration as well as any configurable guard bands, asexemplified by a time-shift timer 752 and decision block 754. In anotherarrangement, a session proxy server may be provided to maintain theconnection state associated with an ABR live media session. In stillfurther arrangements, a combination of techniques may be provided tomaintain the session in a persistent manner. Regardless of how a livemedia session is kept alive during the outage area traversal, anembodiment of the present invention may be advantageously configured toprovide suitable request/response messages to upstream media server(s)so that they do not time out and continue to transmit the live media(including any inserted ad segments) and associated manifests as theykeep getting updated pursuant to the passage of live programming inreal-time.

If the TS timer is greater than the outage duration and a configurableguard band (decision block 754), TS processing may be terminated (block756), e.g., because the wireless UE device may have exited the outagearea and there is accordingly no need for continuing to time-shift.Otherwise, the live media segments and any ad segments of the mediastream continue to be time-shifted. If an updated live manifest isreceived (block 758), a further determination is made as to whether adcredit allocation is enabled (block 760). If the ad credit allocation isnot enabled, segments for the entire media stream, live program segmentsand ad segments, are time-shifted. Accordingly, time-shifted manifest(s)for the live content and the content segments are stored across all ABRbitrates for the particular time-shifted streaming session ID (block764). To ensure that no extra credit is given to the ads (e.g., where asubscriber watches more ads during an outage period than were present inthe time-shifted ABR live media streaming session), another decisionprocess 762 may be executed based on the ad credit shift time limitparameter 718. If a recognized ad segment (i.e., the ad creditallocation is enabled) and the time-shifted session is behind the livemedia time by more than the ad credit shift time limit (block 762),time-shifted manifest and the referenced segment are omitted (i.e., noupdating) and the referenced segments across all bitrates are skipped(i.e., no storage), as set forth in block 766. As illustrated in FIG.7B, the foregoing TS operations are looped through a TS timer increment753 to facilitate execution while the live session ID is active.

FIGS. 7C and 7D depict flowcharts relating to additional processesand/or sub-processes that may be combined or intermixed with otherflowcharts of the present patent application in different embodiments,including client-assisted TS operations and ad playout embodiments setforth further below. In relation to process 700C, ad credit allocationmay be enabled at block 782, e.g., in a manner set forth above. Anaccounting log for crediting ads and ad run time may be maintained,wherein updating of manifests for advertisements is omitted if creditallocation enabled. Accordingly, updated manifests may be stored onlyfor the TS live media segments where the ad credits are enabled for theentire outage duration. These operations are set forth at block 784.According to one example embodiment of the present invention, if the ABRclient stops playing the cached ads during video outage area (block786), the live ABR streaming session having Session ID is terminated(block 790). In such a scenario, no updated manifests for TS mediastream may be maintained or provided to the ABR client. In onevariation, whatever TS program media and ad segments may have beenstored, the system may be configured to discard such data as well. Onthe other hand, the ad accounting log may continue to be maintained orupdated, along with TS manifests for the media segments while it isdetermined that the ABR client has not stopped playing the cached adsduring the outage (block 788). An example process 700D relating toexiting an outage area is depicted in FIG. 7D. As the ABR client/deviceexits the outage area, updated manifests for the TS media may beprovided to and received by the ABR client/device via the serving RANinfrastructure (block 794). Responsive to the updated manifests, the ABRclient/device resumes playing the TS media segments, wherein the ads inthe TS media stream are skipped if the ad credit allocation has beenenabled (block 796).

In a still further embodiment, it will be realized that in somearrangements a service provider or content provider may implementtime-shifting of live programming, e.g., for enabling features such asCatchup TV, Start Over, Scrolling Back, etc. Accordingly, an additionalor alternative variation of the present invention may involve modulatingvideo outage based TS operations and ad playout as set forth herein bytaking into account a service provider's “cleanup window” fortime-shifting.

For instance, if a live media is already ingested by the serviceprovider with a relatively larger cleanup window (e.g., in the range of6 to 72 hours by way illustration) that allows time-shifting, anembodiment of the present invention may forgo performing computations orestimations to allocate a specific amount of saved media segments in theorigin/CDN server, provided the cleanup window is larger than theestimated video outage duration based on the learned white spot locationdatabase. In one implementation, the cleanup window period may becontrolled by the service provider but it may also be related to orotherwise dependent upon the content rights on a per-channel orper-program basis. It will be appreciated that in some arrangements,content owners might not give rights for time-shifting or give a maximumdefined period that may be variable. Accordingly, if the cleanup windowis less than the estimated video outage duration, appropriate servicelogic of the mobile-optimized ABR stream delivery server may performsuitable calculations and determinations to dynamically allocate aproper cleanup window (e.g., based on the session timeout thresholdvalue) for at least a portion of time, which may be modulated/gated theservice logic depending on the relative lengths/durations of (i)provider-based cleanup window; and (ii) estimated white spot area as perthe learned geo-location database. In one arrangement, the time used forthe cleanup window could be the same time used to keep the video sessionalive e.g., in the proxy. As described previously, this is the estimatedtime to travel through the video outage area, which could be dynamicallyconfigured on a per session/video outage basis. In either scenario, thewireless UE device may be configured to receive appropriate manifestsfor accessing the TS media segments for at least a portion of the videooutage area from the origin/CDN location, the remaining TS mediasegments being provided from the nodes 608/610.

If the live media is not time-shifted by the service provider, theembodiments of the present invention provide for dynamic TS windowing bythe mobile-optimized ABR stream delivery server (e.g., involving nodes608/610), wherein the ABR client will resume streaming TS media segmentsfrom a proper media segment in the streaming session upon exiting thewhite spot area as described previously.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate upon reference hereto thatregardless of whether a service provider-based cleanup window isprovided, embodiments set forth herein are operative to provide, use,obtain or determine a time-shifting window that can be defineddynamically, and preferably be based on or related to an estimated videooutage duration that an ABR client may be determined to encounter.Further, at least some of the foregoing processes may also be performedwith suitable modifications in a client-assisted configuration as willbe described further below.

Turning to FIG. 8, depicted therein is a portion 800 of the networkenvironment 400 wherein an ABR streaming session resumption process 900may be practiced according to the embodiment shown in FIG. 9. As theUE-carrying vehicle 410 exits the video outage area 408 and begins toenter the coverage area 404-2, it may experience improved radio signalquality. The ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated deliverycontrol module 416 may determine that the UE-carrying vehicle or clientdevice 410 has exited the video coverage area (block 902). Service logicexecuting thereat may further be configured to determine if theUE/client device requested new variants or a master manifest (block904). If so, it is determined that the live media session was terminatedfor some reason (e.g., no ad playout during the outage). Accordingly,instead of updated TS manifests, non-TS manifests are provided to theABR client to restart the ABR live media streaming session at a currenttime point in the live programming (block 906). If the live mediasession was not terminated during the outage, the ABR stream deliveryserver 414 may update or modify the manifest file in an exampleimplementation to include URLs that point to one or more notificationmessages (e.g., locally cached) appropriate to the exiting state,followed by pointers to time-shifted ABR live media segments starting atthe segment adjacent to the last live media segment what was deliveredprior to video outage (block 908). Thereafter, the updated manifestfile(s) may be transmitted (block 910) to the UE device 410, as shown bypath 802 in FIG. 8. Responsive to the updated manifest files, the ABRclient application on the wireless UE device commences play back of thelocally stored message segment(s) apprising the user of video outageexit condition and subsequent commencement of the time-shifted ABR mediasegments at a suitable point (block 912), which may involve interfacing808 of the ABR stream delivery server system 414/416 with thesession-based ABR time-shifting subsystem 608 for receiving the TS mediasegments. Also, updated manifests and segments for the TS ads are alsoreceived and/or provided where no ad credit allocation was enabled.

It will be realized that the media and/or ad segment pull may bebandwidth-controlled depending on the dynamic signal conditions of thenew coverage area, e.g., starting with low bitrate segments andgradually ramping the bitrate quality. For example, the ABR streamingsession set up in FIG. 8 involves a segment pull rate of 250 Kbs, lowestABR encoded bitrate of 500 Kbs and highest ABR manifest bitrate of 2Mbs, the resumed streaming session initially throttles at pulling 500Kbs media segments, delivered via a path 804 to base station 402-2 asshown in FIG. 8. Also, network entity 414/416 may interface with videoquality location awareness server 418 and associated geo-locationdatabase 420 via suitable request/response messages (e.g., similar torequest 430 and response 432 described hereinabove with respect to FIG.4), to obtain future video outage locations and effectuatepre-populating/pre-caching of relevant alternative ad content withrespect to such locations, as the additional bandwidth progressivelybecomes more available (block 914).

FIG. 10 depicts another network rendition 1000 corresponding to thenetwork environment 400 wherein location-specific, user-targetedadvertisements may continue to be pre-cached as the wireless UE device410 is anticipated to encounter another outage area 1018 of the networkin its expected route 1001 traversing the service area 404-2. Analogousto the coverage area 404-3 described hereinabove, coverage area 404-2 ofbase station 404-2 is shown to include a plurality of concentric signalquality/strength contours 1020-1 to 1020-3, each depicted with arespective signal level indicator icon, 1022-1 to 1022-3, respectively.Contour 1020-1 having the highest signal quality is closest to basestation 402-2, whereas contours 1020-2 and 1020-3 are spaced furtheraway from the base station, with progressively deteriorating signalquality (i.e., strength, level, etc.). For example, area enclosed bycontour 1020-1 may have sufficient signal strength to support an overallbandwidth of 8 Mbs, whereas areas enclosed between contours 1020-1 and1020-2 and between contours 1020-2 and 1020-2 may support overall UEbandwidths of 2 Mbs and 500 Kbs, respectively. When the wireless UEdevice 410 is within the area enclosed by contour 1020-1, service logicassociated with the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associateddelivery control module 416 is operative to determine that given thehighest bitrate of ABR streaming session as being 2 Mbs, there existsadditional bandwidth for pushing updated advertisements and notificationmessages relevant with respect to the next likely outage area 1018 basedon the current heading, direction, and/or speed information associatedwith the estimated route 1001. Similar to the request/response messages430/432, the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated deliverycontrol module 416 is operative to query the video quality locationawareness server 418 and associated geo-location database 420 again viaa request message 1002 containing updated location/heading information.Responsive thereto, a response 1004 containing updated video outage areainformation, including, e.g., its coordinates and an estimate of howlong it will take to traverse the outage area, etc., is provided. Usingrequest/response queries 1006/1008 similar to request/response queries434/436, and request/response queries 1012/1014 similar torequest/response queries 440/442, the ABR stream delivery server 414and/or associated delivery control module 416 is operative to obtainappropriate advertisement segments and notification messages for pushingto the wireless UE device 410, in a manner similar to the process setforth in FIG. 5 described above, suitably modified with respect to thenew video outage area 1018. As it has been determined that there issufficient bandwidth for effectuating streaming of highest bitrate mediasegments, the functionality of network entity 414/416 is operative tothrottle the delivery of time-shifted ABR segments at 2 Mbs via basestation 402-2 as exemplified by path 1018. Further, the network entity414/416 commences managed bandwidth push of advertisement mediasegment(s) and associated manifest(s) as well as the custom messagenotification(s) and associated manifest(s) to the wireless UE device410, via base station 402-2 as exemplified by path 1016, with athrottled delivery rate based on the additional bandwidth amountavailable, similar to the functionalities set forth at block 530 of FIG.5.

It will be realized that in the foregoing embodiments redirection of ABRplay-back in anticipated outage areas (i.e., from ABR media segments toalternative content and back to ABR media segments) is mainly controlledby the network-based functionalities (e.g., the ABR stream deliveryserver 414 and/or associated delivery control module 416 in conjunctionwith other network nodes, which may involve content servers, TSsubsystem nodes, etc. that may be virtualized in a cloud platform)wherein the network-based or cloud-based service logic is operative todetermine when an ABR client device is in the outage area anddynamically adjust the manifest URLs to the stored buffer locationswithin the UE device for commencing the alternative content cachedthereat. As seen from the detailed description hereinabove, some of theembodiments may also provide for appropriate message notifications tothe user to facilitate a richer and more helpful experience with respectto transitioning in and out of radio white spot areas.

In certain other embodiments of the present patent disclosure, aclient-specific or client-controlled redirection may be implemented inan example configuration, especially where custom ABR clients aredeployed. In such implementations, when the ABR client receives orotherwise obtains a notification that it is in an area ofnon-sustainable video bandwidth, it automatically begins playingbuffered alternative content until it is determined that the client hastraversed through the video outage area. FIGS. 11A-11C depictembodiments with respect to client-assisted time-shifting and ad play inan example wireless network environment optimized for ABR live mediastreaming. FIGS. 12-16 depict further details regarding the embodimentsshown in FIGS. 11A-11C. Broadly, FIGS. 11A-11C and 12 relate to awireless network environment 1100A and one or more processes and/orsub-processes associated therewith for effectuating a client-controlledadvertisement push process and session resumption process. FIG. 13Adepicts example ABR buffer status/condition in a client-controlled playout scenario relative to various locations as the client encounters andtraverses through a video outage area as illustrated in FIG. 13B. FIGS.14 and 15 depict example advertisement play out process 1400 and ABRstreaming session resumption process 1500, respectively, in additional.Finally, FIG. 16 depicts another network rendition 1600 corresponding tothe wireless network environment 1100 wherein advertisements continue tobe pushed in a client-controlled manner as the wireless UE device isanticipated to encounter another outage area of the network.

It will be appreciated that instead of the network tracking the clientdevice, the client can be configured to provide its own locationmonitoring and therefore receive coverage area definitions from thenetwork defining the outage areas in the vicinity of its location in aclient-assisted implementation. The client may use either its internalGPS or triangulation functionality to determine its location, rate oftravel and direction or heading. In an alternative embodiment, servicelogic executing on the client device may be programmed or otherwiseconfigured to make a determination as to when the client device istraveling toward an area of non-sustainable video bandwidth and requestthe network to pre-cache the client with targeted ads. Once the clientis inside of the outage area, it may continue to attempt to downloadsegments. These segments may be delivered slightly slower thanreal-time, and the client device could lose the ability to download dataaltogether. The client continues to play the live content until itdetermines if the buffer will be drained once the current and/or lastsegment in the buffer has been played. At this point, the client deviceis programmed or otherwise configured to request the ABR stream deliveryserver to begin the time-shift session. As before, time-shift recordingfor the client's session preferably begins at the requested segment.Once the client's buffer has been drained of the live content, itautomatically begins playing buffered ads until it has traversed throughthe video outage area. As the cached ads are played, the client devicepreferably maintains an ad accounting log, e.g., the number of ads andduration of ads played, etc. Once the client device leaves the outagearea, it can resume time-shifted live video session from a segment nextto the last segment delivered to the client prior to entering the outagearea. Because the client is in control of when to redirect its playoutprocess, a finer granularity of switching between ad content and programmedia content playout may be provided in a client-assistedimplementation. As before, various functionalities relative toclient-assisted time-shifting of live media and ad playout may bevirtualized in a cloud environment as well.

Taking FIGS. 11A/11B and 12 together, those skilled in the art willrecognize that the example wireless network environment 1100A andassociated advertisement push process 1200 are similar to the featuresdepicted in FIGS. 4 and 5. Accordingly, the description of FIGS. 4 and 5is also applied and incorporated here in respect of FIGS. 11A and 12,with suitable modification as needed. Focusing on the client-controlledaspects, it should be noted that the example network environment 1100Ashown in FIG. 11A does not include a video-encoded message generationsystem in contrast to the network-controlled scenario set forth in FIG.4. On the other hand, other network functionalities, e.g., interfacingof the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associated delivery controlmodule 416 in conjunction with other wireless network nodes,geo-location database(s), advertisement media server(s), etc., remainsubstantially the same. The ABR client device 410 is operative toexchange a number of messages (requests, responses and queries) with theABR stream delivery server 414/416 with respect to sending locationinformation (block 1122), obtaining or receiving learned white spotareas (block 1124), and requesting ads for preloading and playout duringan estimated outage (block 1126). In the network rendition 1100A of FIG.11A, an interface 1102 is therefore illustrated with respect to suchclient-controlled interactions, set forth as an example client-assistedprocess 1100B in FIG. 11B. Although it is the client device thatinitiates an ad request for the estimated outage duration, the overallad push process is comparable to the ad push process previouslydescribed. Accordingly, the advertisement push processes 500 and 1200are generally similar, although some of the features of process 1200 maytake place at or be triggered by a custom ABR client.

An overall client-assisted redirection and session resumption process1100C is set forth in FIG. 11C. Upon entering an outage area (block1152), a local service outage notification may be provided to the user(bock 1154), whereupon the stored ads may be played out without havingto receive updated manifests from the network (block 1156). In themeantime, a serving network node effectuates time-shifting of the ABRlive media stream and maintains a persistent state of session activity,along with updated manifests therefor, as described previously (block1158). As the outage area is exited, updated manifests are received fromthe network with respect to the time-shifted content for playback (block1160). Additional client-assisted ad pushing processes may take place,similar to the methodology discussed above, as set forth at block 1162.

According to one particular embodiment, the UE/client device 410 isdetermined to be engaged in an ABR live media streaming session (block1202) in a normal streaming operation (e.g., under suitable radioconditions supportive of sufficient bandwidth). If the ABR streamdelivery server 414 and/or associated delivery control module 416determines that the manifest transport is encrypted (block 1204), it mayrequest the ABR UE device to obtain a top bitrate in the manifest (block1208) so as to facilitate further determinations regarding additionalavailable bandwidth for pushing ads (block 1210). If the live mediamanifests are not encrypted, there is no need to query the ABR clientdevice, as the manifests may be parsed by the network node to obtain allABR bitrate profiles (block 1206). If there is additional bandwidth(block 1210), the network node obtains and processes location/directioninformation from the UE/client device (block 1214). Otherwise, theprocess may be terminated (block 1213) if it is determined that the livevideo session is no longer active (block 1212).

Responsive to the UE/client location and heading information,appropriate video outage areas may be determined upon issuing querymessages to the video QoS location awareness system 418 as before. Theoutage area information may be provided to the UE client device 410, asset forth at block 1216, which determines whether possible serviceoutage is indicated (block 1218). The UE client device 410 furtherdetermines an entry point with respect to the expected outage arealocation (block 1220) and issues a request for suggested ads to coverthe outage area duration (blocks 1222, 1224). Responsive thereto,targeted ad segments and manifests are provided to the UE client device410. It should be appreciated that an embodiment of process 1200 may notinvolve generating video-encoded notification messages and pushing suchmessages to the custom ABR client. On the other hand, a manifestplaylist for the suggested advertisements that cover the estimated videooutage area is generated for facilitating automatic play-back by the ABRclient (block 1226). Thereafter, the advertisement manifest playlist aswell as the advertisement segments are pushed to the ABR client in amanaged bandwidth control process as set forth at block 1228.

Taking FIGS. 13A and 13B together, reference numeral 1300A refers toexemplary ABR buffer status at the wireless UE client device 410 as itencounters and traverses a video outage area 1300B. Preferably, the ABRbuffer is operative for storing media segments received in a live mediastreaming session (e.g., determined to be downloaded at bitrate(s) basedon a calculated bandwidth available to the ABR client) as well as anyads moved from the preloaded cache. Illustratively, video outage area1300B having an ingress boundary 1320 and an egress boundary 1322 isanother rendition of the outage areas described elsewhere herein,wherein the vehicle carrying wireless UE device 410 is shown at fivespecific locations—Locations 1 to 5—relative to the outage area.Reference numeral 1302-1 refers to the ABR buffer conditioncorresponding to Location 1. As the UE-carrying vehicle 410 approachesthe ingress boundary 1320 (e.g., Location 1), it can be seen that theABR buffer may contain a plurality of high bitrate live media segments1304 followed by a plurality of low bitrate segments due to varyingnetwork bandwidth and/or radio signal conditions, for example. The ABRclient continues to play out available high bitrate segments 1304 (e.g.,2 Mbs segments) followed by available low bitrate segments 1306 (e.g.,500 Kbs segments) as the UE-carrying vehicle 410 enters the video outagearea (e.g., Location 2), leading to gradual exhaustion of the buffer,exemplified by the status condition 1303-2. As the media content in theABR buffer is exhausted (indicated by empty buffer storage 1308), theABR buffer is filled with the advertisement segments 1310 (e.g., movedfrom a local cache into the buffer) based on the associated manifestplaylist, as exemplified by the status conditions 1302-3 and 1303-4corresponding to Locations 3 and 4 of the video outage area 1300B. Whenthe UE-carrying vehicle 410 exits the egress boundary 1322 of the videooutage area 1300B, the ABR buffer begins to fill with lower quality livemedia segments, e.g., low bitrate segments 1306, gradually adapting toimproved radio signal conditions, as illustrated by the status condition1302-5 corresponding to Location 5.

FIG. 14 depicts an example advertisement play out process 1400 in aclient-controlled environment described hereinabove. At block 1402, thewireless UE device 410 executing an ABR client application may receive anotification or otherwise determine that it is inside an outage area. Itshould be appreciated that in some implementations, a portion of thevideo outage database may be provided to the wireless UE device so thatthe service logic executing thereat may perform suitable controloperations with respect to automatically playing back the preloadedalternative content in an outage area. Responsive to the determinationthat the wireless UE device is within the outage area, the ABR clientapplication executing thereon continues to play back the available mediasegments from the ABR buffer associated therewith (block 1404). When theABR buffer is eventually drained (block 1406), the ABR client devicesaves the existing state of the last live media segment to downloadbased on the associated manifest (block 1408). A message may begenerated to the network node to begin time-shifting of the ABR livemedia streaming session from the segment following the last segmentdownloaded (block 1410). A locally-generated message or notification maybe provided by the ABR client to the user that the UE device is in thevideo outrage area and time-shifted live streaming session will resumein due course, e.g., when the video outage area is exited, within apredetermined time, etc. (block 1412). Thereafter, the ABR clientapplication commences playing (block 1414) the advertisement segmentsfilled into the ABR buffer from a local storage without having toreceive updated manifests therefor from the network. If an ad creditallocation is allowed (block 1416), the ABR client device keeps anaccounting log as discussed previously (block 1418). Otherwise, adcredit allocation process is disabled and/or disregarded (block 1420).

FIG. 15 depicts an example ABR streaming session resumption process 1500in a client-controlled environment. Similar to the features of block1402, the wireless UE device 410 may determine or otherwise obtain anotification that it has exited an outage area (block 1502). Aclient-initiated bandwidth rate test may be issued to the network nodeas an additional “insurance” to determine if there is enough bandwidthfor video delivery (blocks 1504 and 1506). If so, the ABR clientapplication determines that an advertisement segment is currently beingplayed and proceeds to complete playing that current advertisementsegment (block 1508). Upon determining that the wireless UE device hassufficient radio signal quality, a notification may be provided to theuser that video coverage is available and streaming of time-shiftedcontent may be resumed (block 1510). The UE device requests updatedmanifests for the time-shifted content starting at the correct mediasegment (block 1512). If there was credit allocation for ads (block1514), the UE client device removes the ad content from the resumed TSmedia stream, e.g., based on the ads watched during video service outage(block 1516). Otherwise, the ad segments continue to be maintained inthe TS media stream at their respective ad insertion points (block1520). The ABR client application of the UE device resumes playing TSmedia stream at the next segment beyond the previously played segmentprior to the outage (block 1518). Thereafter, client-controlledadvertisement pushing may continue as additional bandwidth becomesavailable (block 1522), similar to the features set forth at block 914in FIG. 9.

FIG. 16 depicts another rendition 1600 corresponding to the wirelessnetwork environment 1100 wherein location-specific and/or user-specificadvertisements are pre-cached as the wireless UE device 410 isanticipated to encounter another outage area 1618 of the network in itsexpected route 1601 traversing through the service area of base station402-2. Analogous to the scenario depicted in FIG. 10, suitablerequest/response queries 1602/1604 with respect to the video qualitylocation awareness server 418 and associated geo-location database 420may be executed by the ABR stream delivery server 414 and/or associateddelivery control module 416 relative to the expected route 1601, e.g.,based on location, speed, heading, etc. A communication interface 1652is maintained between the wireless UE device 410 and the network node(s)414/416 to continue client-assisted operations relative to providinglocation information and obtaining video outage area definitions inresponse thereto. Pursuant to client-initiated ad requests as before,suitable request/response queries 1608/1610 may be effectuated forobtaining appropriate advertisement segments to be pushed to thewireless UE device 410, in a manner similar to the process set forth inFIG. 12 described above. The new set of advertisement segments arespecific and relevant with respect to the new video outage area 1618 andmay take up shorter or longer duration than the advertisement clipspreviously provided relative to the earlier outage area 408 (i.e.,updating of locally-cached alternative content on outage area basis). Asit has been determined that there is sufficient bandwidth foreffectuating streaming of highest bitrate media segments, thefunctionality of network entity 414/416 is operative to throttle thedelivery of ABR media segments at 2 Mbs via base station 402-2 asexemplified by streaming session path 1616. Further, the network entity414/416 commences managed bandwidth push of advertisement mediasegment(s) and associated manifest playlist to the wireless UE device410, via base station 402-2 as exemplified by advertisement push path1614, with a corresponding throttled delivery rate based on theadditional bandwidth amount available, similar to the functionalitiesset forth at block 530 of FIG. 5 and block 1228 of FIG. 12.

FIG. 17 depicts a block diagram of an example network element 1700configured to execute certain aspects according to one or moreembodiments of the present patent application. By way of illustration,network element 1700 is exemplary of a mobile-optimized ABR streamdelivery server and/or associated delivery control module describedabove, which may be provided as part of an RNC or virtualized in a cloudaccording to certain embodiments. One or more processors 1702 may beprovided for controlling a plurality of subsystems, at least a portionof which may be implemented as a combination of hardware and softwaremodules stored as instructions or program code in suitable persistentmemory 1722. An outage area request module 1706 is configured toeffectuate suitable request/response mechanisms for obtaining videooutage area information via an interface 1712 to appropriate videoQoS-aware location servers/databases described hereinabove. Anadvertisement request module 1708 is operative to effectuate suitablerequest/response mechanisms for obtaining advertisement segments basedon the video outage information and/or user demographic information,etc., via an interface 1714 to one or more advertisementservers/databases. An ad credit allocation and accounting module 1705 isprovided for determining and verifying whether credit allocation isenabled for ad playout during outage in accordance with an network-basedembodiment of the present patent application. A message notificationmodule 1720 may optionally be included for obtaining video-encodednotification messages in a network-controlled implementation of ABRstreaming redirection. A delivery control module 1710 is operative toeffectuate segment encoding, user session segment delivery andadvertisement push as well as appropriate bandwidth control for sessionsvia radio interfaces 1716 with respect to a serving wireless network.Additionally, network element 1700 may also include appropriateinterfacing 1718 with respect to live content sources and/or associateddelivery networks as well as time-shifted media and manifest subsystems.

It will be realized that at least a portion of the program instructionsstored in the memory 1722 may be configured to execute one or more ofthe network-centric processes set forth hereinabove, including but notlimited to TS operations and maintaining persistent live media sessionstates for configurable time durations.

FIG. 18 depicts a block diagram of an example subscriber end stationoperative as a wireless UE device 1800 including an ABR player or client1806 configured to execute certain aspects under control of processor(s)1802 according to one or more embodiments of the present patentapplication. Appropriate transceiver (Tx/Rx) circuitry 1804 coupled toan antenna unit 1814 is operative to effectuate radio communications forpurposes of the present disclosure including, e.g., streaming of media,pre-caching of advertisements and notification messages, etc. inaddition to other standard cellular telephony/data communications. TheABR client 1806 is operative to play out segments stored in an ABRbuffer 1812, which may be filled with preloaded content from a localcache 1810 in certain embodiments described above. An ad creditallocation and accounting module 1805 is provided for determining andverifying whether credit allocation is enabled for ad playout duringoutage in accordance with a client-based embodiment of the presentpatent application. An HTTP server 1816 may be provided in certainembodiments for facilitating internal referencing of manifest URLscorresponding to locally cached content. In one implementation, thefunctionality of HTTP server 1816 may be implemented as executable codeportion stored in a persistent memory module 1814. Additionally, thepersistent memory module 1814 may also comprise various code portionsfor effectuating at least some of the processes described hereinabove.

Based upon the foregoing Detailed Description, it should be appreciatedthat one or more embodiments of the present disclosure can beadvantageously implemented in a number of wireless ABR streamingenvironments that may include legacy client applications and/or customclient applications. By detecting potential video outage areas in awireless network environment, better network service behavior can beachieved for any location-based service involving video streaming, forexample.

In the above-description of various embodiments of the presentdisclosure, it is to be understood that the terminology used herein isfor the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is notintended to be limiting of the invention. Unless otherwise defined, allterms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have thesame meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the artto which this invention belongs. It will be further understood thatterms, such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries, should beinterpreted as having a meaning that is consistent with their meaning inthe context of this specification and the relevant art and may not beinterpreted in an idealized or overly formal sense expressly so definedherein.

At least some example embodiments are described herein with reference toblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustrations of computer-implementedmethods, apparatus (systems and/or devices) and/or computer programproducts. It is understood that a block of the block diagrams and/orflowchart illustrations, and combinations of blocks in the blockdiagrams and/or flowchart illustrations, can be implemented by computerprogram instructions that are performed by one or more computercircuits. Such computer program instructions may be provided to aprocessor circuit of a general purpose computer circuit, special purposecomputer circuit, and/or other programmable data processing circuit toproduce a machine, so that the instructions, which execute via theprocessor of the computer and/or other programmable data processingapparatus, transform and control transistors, values stored in memorylocations, and other hardware components within such circuitry toimplement the functions/acts specified in the block diagrams and/orflowchart block or blocks, and thereby create means (functionality)and/or structure for implementing the functions/acts specified in theblock diagrams and/or flowchart block(s). Additionally, the computerprogram instructions may also be stored in a tangible computer-readablemedium that can direct a computer or other programmable data processingapparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructionsstored in the computer-readable medium produce an article of manufactureincluding instructions which implement the functions/acts specified inthe block diagrams and/or flowchart block or blocks.

As alluded to previously, tangible, non-transitory computer-readablemedium may include an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, orsemiconductor data storage system, apparatus, or device. More specificexamples of the computer-readable medium would include the following: aportable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM) circuit, aread-only memory (ROM) circuit, an erasable programmable read-onlymemory (EPROM or Flash memory) circuit, a portable compact discread-only memory (CD-ROM), and a portable digital video disc read-onlymemory (DVD/Blu-ray). The computer program instructions may also beloaded onto or otherwise downloaded to a computer and/or otherprogrammable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operationalsteps to be performed on the computer and/or other programmableapparatus to produce a computer-implemented process. Accordingly,embodiments of the present invention may be embodied in hardware and/orin software (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.)that runs on a processor or controller, which may collectively bereferred to as “circuitry,” “a module” or variants thereof. Further, anexample processing unit may include, by way of illustration, a generalpurpose processor, a special purpose processor, a conventionalprocessor, a digital signal processor (DSP), a plurality ofmicroprocessors, one or more microprocessors in association with a DSPcore, a controller, a microcontroller, Application Specific IntegratedCircuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) circuits, anyother type of integrated circuit (IC), and/or a state machine As can beappreciated, an example processor unit may employ distributed processingin certain embodiments.

Further, in at least some additional or alternative implementations, thefunctions/acts described in the blocks may occur out of the order shownin the flowcharts. For example, two blocks shown in succession may infact be executed substantially concurrently or the blocks may sometimesbe executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality/actsinvolved. Moreover, the functionality of a given block of the flowchartsand/or block diagrams may be separated into multiple blocks and/or thefunctionality of two or more blocks of the flowcharts and/or blockdiagrams may be at least partially integrated. For example, at leastsome of the nodes shown in the wireless streaming network environmentsof FIG. 4 and FIG. 11A such as the ABR stream delivery server and/orassociated delivery control module, video-encoded message generationsystem, video outage area location server and associated database(s),for example, may be integrated or otherwise co-located in differentcombinations, including as part of an RNC node. Finally, other blocksmay be added/inserted between the blocks that are illustrated. Moreover,although some of the diagrams include arrows on communication paths toshow a primary direction of communication, it is to be understood thatcommunication may occur in the opposite direction relative to thedepicted arrows.

One skilled in the art will further recognize that various apparatuses,subsystems, functionalities/applications and/or one or more networkelements as well as the underlying network infrastructures set forthabove for facilitating video outage coverage may be architected in avirtualized environment according to a network function virtualization(NFV) architecture in additional or alternative embodiments of thepresent patent disclosure. For instance, various physical resources,services, applications and functions set forth herein above with respectto an example ABR streaming network environment may be provided asvirtual appliances, machines or functions, wherein the resources andapplications are virtualized into suitable virtual network functions(VNFs) or virtual network elements (VNEs) via a suitable virtualizationlayer. In such embodiments, resources comprising compute resources,memory resources, and network infrastructure resources are virtualizedinto corresponding virtual resources wherein virtual compute resources,virtual memory resources and virtual network resources are collectivelyoperative to support a VNF layer, whose overall management andorchestration functionality may be supported by a virtualizedinfrastructure manager (VIM) in conjunction with a VNF manager and anNFV orchestrator. An Operation Support System (OSS) and/or BusinessSupport System (BSS) component may typically be provided for handlingnetwork-level functionalities such as network management, faultmanagement, configuration management, service management, and subscribermanagement, etc., which may interface with VNF layer and NFVorchestration components via suitable interfaces.

Accordingly, at least a portion of an example network architecturedisclosed herein may be virtualized as set forth above and architectedin a cloud-computing environment comprising a shared pool ofconfigurable virtual resources. Various pieces of software, e.g., TSoperations, ad credit allocation, TS media/ad storage, subscribermanagement, etc., as well as platforms and infrastructure of a networkmay be implemented in a service-oriented architecture, e.g., Software asa Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), infrastructure as aService (IaaS) etc., with involved parties providing different featuresof an example embodiment of the present invention. Skilled artisans willalso appreciate that such a cloud-computing environment may comprise oneor more of private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds, communityclouds, distributed clouds, multiclouds and interclouds (e.g., “cloud ofclouds”), and the like.

Although various embodiments have been shown and described in detail,the claims are not limited to any particular embodiment or example. Noneof the above Detailed Description should be read as implying that anyparticular component, element, step, act, or function is essential suchthat it must be included in the scope of the claims. Reference to anelement in the singular is not intended to mean “one and only one”unless explicitly so stated, but rather “one or more.” All structuraland functional equivalents to the elements of the above-describedembodiments that are known to those of ordinary skill in the art areexpressly incorporated herein by reference and are intended to beencompassed by the present claims. Accordingly, those skilled in the artwill recognize that the exemplary embodiments described herein can bepracticed with various modifications and alterations within the spiritand scope of the claims appended below.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method operating at a wireless user equipment(UE) device engaged in an adaptive bitrate (ABR) live media streamingsession, the method comprising: transmitting, by the wireless UE device,current location information, speed and travel direction associated withthe wireless UE device to a network node; receiving estimated videooutage area information from the network node, the estimated videooutage area information being determined responsive to the currentlocation information, speed and travel direction provided by thewireless UE device; sending a request to the network node forfacilitating preloading of advertisement content prior to entering anoutage area; and receiving the advertisement content from the networknode to be played for a duration responsive to an estimation of how longservice outage is to last in the outage area based on an estimatedtravel direction and an estimated speed associated with the wireless UEdevice.
 2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the advertisementcontent is locally cached at the wireless UE device and comprises one ormore local, regional or national advertisement segments targeted basedon at least one of the outage area's location, a user demographicprofile associated with the wireless UE device, and content type of theABR live media streaming session.
 3. The method as recited in claim 1,further comprising: upon entering the outage area, sending a message tothe network node to commence time-shifting of the ABR live mediastreaming session for at least the duration of service outage.
 4. Themethod as recited in claim 3, further comprising: providing an alertthat the ABR live media streaming session will be time-shifted for theduration of service outage; and commencing playout of the advertisementcontent without having to receive updated manifests from the networknode for the advertisement content.
 5. The method as recited in claim 4,further comprising: enabling credit allocation for the advertisementcontent; and maintaining an accounting log for the advertisement contentfor which credit allocation has been enabled.
 6. The method as recitedin claim 5, further comprising: upon exiting the outage area, receivingmanifests from the network node with respect to the time-shifted ABRlive media stream and resuming the time-shifted ABR live media streamingsession based on the received manifests.
 7. The method as recited inclaim 6, further comprising: determining that there was creditallocation for the advertisement content; and responsive to thedetermining, deleting advertisement segments of the resumed time-shiftedABR live media streaming session.
 8. The method as recited in claim 6,further comprising: determining that there was no credit allocation forthe advertisement content; and responsive to the determining, continuingto keep advertisement segments of the resumed time-shifted ABR livemedia streaming session.
 9. The method as recited in claim 3, furthercomprising: determining that the wireless UE device is exiting the videooutage area; and receiving updated manifests for time-shifted ABR mediasegments that reference at least one of a service provider'stime-shifted (TS) live media database and a TS media database associatedwith a live ABR stream delivery server.
 10. A wireless user equipment(UE) device, comprising: a cache for storing advertisement contentdownloaded from a network node while the wireless UE device is in radiocoverage having a sufficient signal quality for supporting an overallbandwidth rate that is greater than a bandwidth rate necessary forfacilitating an adaptive bitrate (ABR) live media streaming session ofcontent encoded at a highest bitrate; an ABR buffer for storing mediasegments encoded at different bitrates received in the ABR live mediastreaming session; an ABR client player configured to play back contentout of the ABR buffer; and one or more processors coupled to apersistent memory having program instructions for controlling the ABRclient player and configured to perform the following: transmit currentlocation information, speed and travel direction associated with thewireless UE device to a network node; receive estimated video outagearea information from the network node, the estimated video outage areainformation being determined responsive to the current locationinformation, speed and travel direction associated with the wireless UEdevice; send a request to the network node for facilitating preloadingof advertisement content prior to entering an outage area; receive theadvertisement content from the network node for storage in the cache,the advertisement content to be played for a duration responsive to anestimation of how long service outage is to last in the outage areabased on an estimated travel direction and an estimated speed associatedwith the wireless UE device.
 11. The wireless UE device as recited inclaim 10, wherein the advertisement content comprises one or more local,regional or national advertisement segments targeted based on at leastone of the outage area location, a user demographic profile associatedwith the wireless UE device, and content type of the ABR live mediastreaming session.
 12. The wireless UE device as recited in claim 10,wherein the persistent memory further includes instructions forperforming: upon entering the outage area, sending a message to thenetwork node to commence time-shifting of the ABR live media streamingsession for at least the duration of service outage.
 13. The wireless UEdevice as recited in claim 12, wherein the persistent memory furtherincludes instructions for performing: provide an alert that the ABR livemedia streaming session will be time-shifted for the duration of serviceoutage; move the cached advertisement content into the ABR buffer; andcommence playout of the advertisement content by the ABR client playerwithout having to receive updated manifests from the network node forthe advertisement content.
 14. The wireless UE device as recited inclaim 13, wherein the persistent memory further includes instructionsfor performing: enable credit allocation for the advertisement content;and maintain an accounting log for the advertisement content for whichcredit allocation has been enabled.
 15. The wireless UE device asrecited in claim 14, wherein the persistent memory further includesinstructions for performing: upon exiting the outage area, receivemanifests from the network node with respect to the time-shifted ABRlive media stream and resume the time-shifted ABR live media streamingsession by the ABR client player based on the received manifests. 16.The wireless UE device as recited in claim 15, wherein the persistentmemory further includes instructions for performing: determine thatthere was credit allocation for the advertisement content; andresponsive to the determining, delete advertisement segments of theresumed time-shifted ABR live media streaming session.
 17. The wirelessUE device as recited in claim 15, wherein the persistent memory furtherincludes instructions for performing: determine that there was no creditallocation for the advertisement content; and responsive to thedetermining, continue to keep advertisement segments of the resumedtime-shifted ABR live media streaming session.
 18. A non-transitorycomputer-readable medium containing program instructions stored thereonwhich, when executed by one or more processors of a wireless userequipment (UE) device, facilitate a time-shifted adaptive bitrate (ABR)live media streaming session in a wireless radio network environment,the non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising programinstructions for performing: transmitting, by the wireless UE device,current location information, speed and travel direction associated withthe wireless UE device to a network node; receiving estimated videooutage area information from the network node, the estimated videooutage area information being determined responsive to the currentlocation information, speed and travel direction provided by thewireless UE device; sending a request to the network node forfacilitating preloading of advertisement content prior to entering anoutage area; receiving the advertisement content from the network nodeto be played for a duration responsive to an estimation of how longservice outage is to last in the outage area based on an estimatedtravel direction and an estimated speed associated with the wireless UEdevice; and upon entering the outage area, sending a message to thenetwork node to commence time-shifting of the ABR live media streamingsession for at least the duration of service outage.
 19. Thenon-transitory computer-readable medium as recited in claim 18, furthercomprising program instructions for performing: providing an alert thatthe ABR live media streaming session will be time-shifted for theduration of service outage; moving the cached advertisement content intothe ABR buffer; and commencing playout of the advertisement content bythe ABR client player without having to receive updated manifests fromthe network node for the advertisement content.
 20. The non-transitorycomputer-readable medium as recited in claim 19, further comprisingprogram instructions for performing: enabling credit allocation for theadvertisement content; and maintaining an accounting log for theadvertisement content for which credit allocation has been enabled. 21.The non-transitory computer-readable medium as recited in claim 20,further comprising program instructions for performing: upon exiting theoutage area, receiving manifests from the network node with respect tothe time-shifted ABR live media stream and resuming playback of thetime-shifted ABR live media streaming session based on the receivedmanifests; determining that there was credit allocation for theadvertisement content; and responsive to the determining, deletingadvertisement segments of the resumed time-shifted ABR live mediastreaming session.